15 February 2014

X’hal help me, but I actually enjoyed the fourth digital Teen Titans Go! comic, despite it being based on the amoral TV cartoon of the same name.

In this story, after the Titans catch Captain Cold, Robin…catches cold.

DC Digital seems to have lost the understanding of how to use ComiXology’s “Guided View” technology that it demonstrated in the earliest Batman 66 installments, but artist Jorge Corona gets its potential, and the overly shifty panels don’t interfere with the story too much.

It helps that writer Merrill Hagan’s story shows the Titans actually trying to help other people, whether by fighting villains or viruses. (Cyborg and Beast Boy are less altruistic than the others, but even they do some heroics.) Unlike so many of the TV stories, this tale isn’t driven by simple hunger or ego or other base urges.

In addition, there’s a dig at the New 52 Universe and a look at this Robin’s bedroom in this Titans Tower. He, too, has his original costume in a glass case—but apparently as a warning of what not to wear.

2 comments:

This show continues to fascinate me. Maybe not in a good way. To think of all the Titans comics adventures over the years, the old Wolfman/Perez stuff, and then to see it translated into a purposefully-inane cartoon is wonderfully bizarre. I don't like it per se, but the translation of this one thing into this other thing is very interesting to me.

I findly myself grimly seized by this series, too. As if it were a stereotypical car crash, I don't want to look, but every so often I can't resist taking a peek. I haven't watched any TV episodes for months, but I had to track down Robin's "Morning" song online after hearing about it.

This was the first issue of the comic I've looked at, and I had to acknowledge I enjoyed it.

About the Author

J. L. BELL is a writer and reader of fantasy literature for children. His favorite authors include L. Frank Baum, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper. He is an Assistant Regional Advisor in the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, and was the editor of Oziana, creative magazine of the International Wizard of Oz Club, from 2004 to 2010.

Living in Massachusetts, Bell also writes about the American Revolution at Boston 1775.